What is the Main Aim of Software Tester?

“The main activity of testers is that they provide to the project participants of development software negative feedback on the quality of the product.”

D. Spolsky recently described the same idea in his article «Why testers?»

«A great tester gives programmers immediate feedback on what they did right and what they did wrong.»

That’s great, but I think that this is not an absolute truth. In fact, depending on project size and role distribution goal and task of the tester are changing, and rather obviously.

It may actually be a few options (the list is not limited – your version is always appropriate in the comments):

1. Tester – does not Affect the Project.

In this case, in fact, a tester should give just the information.

2. Tester Affects the Project.

Tester obtains the information, to determine whether he could project release and take responsibility for the quality of the product by himself. Such situation is not less common than the first. And I think it is more important.

After all, the question itself: just give information or to subscribe to the release of the product – leading to a more serious approach.

Different people perceive the world individually, but if the tester is not responsible for the release, his hands are untied – delayed release, production is not enough high-quality versions, etc.

Of course, the guillotine is not showing as a possible outcome of events, but a serious share of the responsibility is quite acceptable.

3. Tester – Mega Brain of the Project / Release.

This is very rare and often goes beyond the standard tasks of tester.

Define SCOPE produced in this release: restriction requested by the business opportunities in terms of testing.

Check that the programmers have done what was required is the main field of activity testers.

Project the result: subscribe to the fact that the released product is really what is needed and is working as expected.

QATestLab is a team of professionals working in various fields to ensure the quality of IT projects: test managers, manual, automated and load testing test engineers, consultants and trainers.